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This article argues for the inclusion of contemporary Québécois translations of twentieth-century Irish plays as part of the Irish theatrical diaspora. The presence of an Irish diaspora in North America was mainly the result of massive waves of immigration, in large part due to the Great Famine, peaking during the mid-nineteenth century before gradually abating. This diaspora in Quebec has resisted full linguistic assimilation, yet was also integrated into many aspects of its culture, a fact that was facilitated by similar political, religious, and even linguistic parallels and elements. Interest in Irish culture, especially in its theatrical output, remains high, with many theatre companies in the province commissioning seasons based on Celtic Tiger-era dramas, translated by Québécois playwrights who also happen to be translators. In tracing and analysing the reason for this interest, despite diminished recent immigration, this article provides the basis for continued research into the performative force of proactive translations across varying diasporic traditions.

Éloi de Grandmont’s 1968 translation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, staged by Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in their 1968–69 season, featured dialogue in standard French as well as joual, paralleling Shaw’s dichotomy between Cockney and Standard English from the 1941 source text, and also reterritorialized London’s environs to Montreal. Grandmont’s translation of Pygmalion highlights translation as creative and productive, rather than derivative and secondary, work because it reconstructs and reterritorializes, rather than mimics, a Shavian Montreal. Adapting the original play demonstrates how language influences and constructs identity through the layering of various other linguistic and cultural constructions. This article therefore demonstrates the impact of Grandmont’s proactive translation of Shaw’s Pygmalion, serving to inspire later sociopolitically proactive translations in Quebec, and analyzes how the translator foregrounds Québécois identity during the formative period of La Révolution Tranquille.

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